Yeah, more Double Dragon. After the awfulness that is DD3, I had to play something worthwhile. Return of Double Dragon is that. It's a little slower than its contemporaries, but it's got a nice moveset, and is pretty fair about things. You have a cool block/counter move, although it's only really good on certain mooks for the countering part. You can block most attacks, though. Not swords, though, and those guys crop up all through the game. You'll also snag weapons every now and then, with the unquestioned best of them being the nunchaku. Again. Man, those things are mean.

The other change is that you can't do your cyclone kick like before. Instead, you've got a meter you charge by holding the R button, and the length of the charge determines what you get when you attack. Early in the meter, you get a spinning backfist or a sort of leaping roundhouse. Go past halfway, though... and there's your spinning kick. Except now, it's more like Chun-Li's spinning bird kick, flying across the screen. It's very useful, but takes time to charge. If you go all the way up, you'll enter a sort of rage mode where you have this sort of Bruce Lee look on your face and your attack do a ton of damage and instant knockdown. It's actually not as useful as it sounds, but it is kinda cool nonetheless.

Anyway, the run was pretty easy overall. I jacked up the continues, but I needn't have bothered; I only ended up burning two (the default is five). And several of my deaths were of the careless and/or changing things up for variety's sake type.

The Japanese version is a bit different from the American release, there's a little bit more at the end of the game, but nothing major. Both versions have no cutscenes at all, it's just one stage after the other. After a quick look at HG101 to see what I might have missed, there were apparently supposed to be, but it all got axed to get it to market quickly. Oh, what could have been. Seeing Technos run its series into the ground just wasn't a pretty thing. This was the last gasp of the traditional series, so at least it turned out pretty good, but it could have been great. 8/10.

(As regarding Neon, someone recommended treating it more as a Streets of Rage game instead, and I can definitely see the parallels. That was one of my favorite games of that year, so I guess it definitely clicked with me. It really took those extra runs to really come into its own, though.)

While I do own the third one on PC, I think via a Humble Bundle, I haven't actually played any of the other Saints Row games. More or less, I tend to buy one of my brothers a small stack of games for his birthday and Christmas - some that I'm pretty sure he'll like, others that I know are good if he wanted to give a new genre a chance, but may never even get opened. SR4 falls more into the former. The Re-Elected version is the 8th gen port with all the DLC included. I wound up playing it myself because it was $5 on the PSN sale, so I figured I'd try it and see - the base game anyway. The stand-alone expansion Gat Out of Hell is a separate purchase, and only seems to be included as a download code in the disc version as well. All of the other DLC is simply rolled into the game.

I wound up having enough fun with it to do most of what there was to do, at least with regard to missions and activities on the map. It is, essentially, a GTA style game, though this one is essentially set in an alien simulation, kind of like the Matrix...or, really, the M. Night Shaym-Aliens! episode of Rick and Morty, which might be the more apt comparison (half wonder if that took some inspiration from this). In turn, you have superpowers for most of the game, albeit ones that get disabled temporarily during a fair number of missions. Most of the game is basically going around completing challenges on the map - most/all of which you'd be directed to do by various members of your gang/crew, if you choose to do side-quests. I didn't realize that to start with, so I mostly went out and just cleared the map before even rescuing most of them....and wound up auto-completing a lot of stuff as a result.

In and of itself, most of that is okay, but gets somewhat repetitive fairly quickly, not to mention fairly easy (getting top rankings in activities probably isn't, but any completion level seems to be fine). What made Saints Row IV really work for me is that it's a comedy. Sometimes it's parodying movies or other games, sometimes self aware, or usually just being ridiculous. It made it just kind of a fun casual-ish thing - one that's definitely not all-ages, but also one that stays video gamey. The little I've seen of, say, GTAV, certainly has some parody to it, but it's a bit more mean spirited as well - and then there are things like torture worked in. That's...just not really here.

I do wish that they allowed you to replay the actual missions though, since that's where a lot of the parodies are - including a Streets of Rage tribute rendered in filters to make it look 2D. The DLCs can be repeated anytime, but all the other unique content requires replaying the game to that point.

Suffice to say, I think my brother will enjoy it when he gets around to it, and it was well worth the $5 I spent on it too.

Re: Games Beaten 2016

Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2016 12:09 pm

by marurun

I still think the PC Engine Double Dragon II is the best version. I don't like the music, but the graphics and play control are great.

Re: Games Beaten 2016

Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2016 12:52 pm

by Stark

I've been terrible with keeping up with this thread, as usual for me towards the end of the year. I beat VVVVV yesterday, it is free on Vita for PSN Plus. Fun platformer with some challenging gameplay and catchy music. The gameplay all revolves around being able to swap gravity up and down at will. Definitely a great use of a couple of hours!

I really enjoyed Magicka 1, but was so disapointed with its lack of a functioning local multiplayer. It did have local multiplayer, but it was just unplayable on a gamepad with the control set-up they had. This being the case, I was very excited when I not only heard of Magicka 2, but also that it was being developed with gamepads in mind. I am here to confirm, that BOY did they ever deliver.

On a control basis, the game is now as perfect as it's ever going to get. None of the functionality of the old methods of the keyboard-based set up are gone: There's still self-cast, AOE-cast, and weapon-cast bound to the shoulder buttons, with the beam-directional casting now bound to the direction your point the right thumbstick. Additionally, you can now MOVE while casting, meaning the whole dynamic of combat has fundamentally changed. There are still 8 spell elements, and you can pick one of the eight by pressing one of the four right-hand face buttons, and then holding L1 to toggle between the first set of four and the second set. It takes a little getting used to, but I picked it up really quick, and it's far FAR better than the horrible old method of doing different-directioned quarter-circles on the right joystick to pick elements.

Other miscelanious control and gameplay improvements are that the d-pad is now used as hotkeys for your different magicks (the specific, special spells gotten by combining different spell elements (things like haste, or revive)), and the single player mode has been improved dramatically by the addition of a familiar which will revive you upon death, and can be resummoned with the revive key. It certainly beats just having to NEVER die like the first game Xp

Other than those control evolutions, the core of the game is still good ol' Magicka. A silly story for one to four wizards led by "definitely not a vampire" Vlad, on a mission to save the world! A very light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, self referential fantasy story, with tons of pop-culture references sprinkled throughout. My personal favorites being "Sir Antburrow," who gives you weird nature trivia when you talk to him, and "John Frost," who will warn you of an incoming cold-front from the north

Verdict: Highly recommended. The co-optional wizard homicide simulator has still got it! An action game that's still great fun to play on your own or with friends. However, I'd still be hesitant to play it with young children not only because of the somewhat complex control nature, but also because things tend to blow up into bloody chunks when killed with death magic

Looks like that's a wrap for me. I was averaging about 50 the last few years, so it was a very productive 2016. Really nice to revisit Condemned and FEAR 1-2 again at the end there, still love them and FEAR holds up as one of my all time favorite FPS's.

As everyone should know, I love the Neptunia series. It is my all time favorite video game franchise, and I will fight anyone who tries to tell me it's not great (I routinely fight large number of opponents...). Superdimension Neptune vs. Sega Hard Girls is - as the title suggests - a crossover game between the Hyperdimension Neptunia and Sega Hard Girls series. It's more accurate, however, to say that they shoehorned Sega Hard Girls characters into a Hyperdimension Neptunia game (kind of what they did with Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE by shoehorning Fire Emblem characters into a Persona game).

If you've played any of the three Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth games Megadimension Neptunia VII, then you know exactly what to expect in terms of gameplay. This one plays out exactly like the standard Nep JRPG. In my opinion, that's a great thing. However, if you're super hardcore about your JRPGs, it might not appeal to you. "Challenge" is one thing that does NOT describe a Neptunia RPG. Even if you don't buy the few $1 break-the-game DLCs, the game is NOT difficult, and you unlock some pseudo-game-breaking options just by playing normally (though you can, thankfully, disable or enable these at will). You don't play Nep games for the challenge, though; you play them for the lovable characters and shattered fourth wall.

So basically the plot is that you're the Doctor except instead of a Time Lord, you're IF (she's the protagonist in this one); instead of a companion, you have Segami; and instead of a TARDIS, you have a motorcycle possessed by the ghost of Neptune. As you travel through the four eras of Gamindustry's past, you'll encounter Plutia and Mega Drive, Neptune (again) and Saturn, Nepgear and Game Gear, and Uzume and Dreamcast. It's like a Sega fanboy's dream come true (so of course I loved it). It is HELLA goofy, though; steer clear of this one if you're wanting a serious plot with serious characters. FFS, the titular character spends the whole game possessing a god damn motorcycle. It's the best kind of goofy, but it's 110% goofy.

I'm not going to say too too much more about this game because it's essentially pure fan service. If you don't like the idea of a silly RPG with personified Sega consoles, you won't like this game no matter what I say; if you think that idea sounds amazing, you're going to like this game even if I say nothing. If you're unfamiliar with the Neptunia series, I don't recommend starting with this one. Go pick up Re;Birth 1 on Vita or Steam and start with that one. If you've put your foot in the water with Neptunia before, however, and are familiar with some of the characters and their personalities (and actually like it; I know I'm a minority on that), then you definitely shouldn't miss this one. I liked it a lot more than most people, and it's admittedly very niche game, but if you fall into the that niche, it's a pretty great experience.

I popped in Drill Spirits for the first time in nearly a decade. Finished the last two time attack stages, and that was that. Turns out, the one I hadn't finished (to open up the final stage) was "The Mansion" stage from the first game. So that was fun and easy. I like Mr. Driller as a concept, but I'm not a huge fan of this version. I'll stick to the original.

--

Tactics Ogre was like my white whale this year (I started it back in mid-June), and I'm quite happy to have brought it all home, just under the wire, before the end of 2016.

So, for starters, the Saturn version doesn't have many differences compared to the PS or SNES versions: Extra horizontal resolution compared to SNES (except for in some cutscenes), reworked soundtrack, voice over in a number of cutscenes (which is very nice), no jerky weirdness when casting spells and such like the PS version. Load times in general are pretty agreeable, with the only loading of note being on booting the game (or soft resetting, which I did a lot of), starting the game, and getting into and out of encounters / floors. It's a very inviting package, aesthetically, and plays without any hiccups.

I'll also get this out of the way: The story is absurdly good. It is easily up there with BoF: Dragon Quarter, the Suikoden trilogy, Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana, and Shenmue I/II in terms of story; Perhaps it's a little better than Terra Phantastica in that regard, also. The story is aided in part by being a narrative sequel to Ogre Battle, but is still in a completely different league entirely. From the start, it throws the player into the heat of political strife, and the plight of a Kosovan-esque people trying to make sense of recent events in their history. With the help of some characters from Ogre Battle, one gets to choose a path toward the reunification of the continent, with plenty of pitfalls, and alliance with a variety of different characters--either garnered through altruism and a common objective, or tenuously accepted out of fear or selfish motives--along the way. One rather unfortunate thing is that many of the allied characters don't play very significant roles in the story. I really liked Olivia, and was really happy that she was displayed so prominently in the ending I got, but despite always having her in my active group, she didn't really have any lines after I recruited her. Speaking of the ending:

Boy howdy did Desbordes' part grab my cockles by the short hairs, and refuse to let go. I'm also a little confused about what actually happened to Lancelot. Clearly he was brain damaged, but I wasn't sure if he was meant to be "undead" or if it was just a side effect of being so beaten and malnourished when he was in the Lodis' custody. Either way, Kachua seemed pretty remorseful--or in denial, one of the two.

Obviously the story and presentation is great, but sadly, I did not enjoy the gameplay. Battles (even extremely easy ones like a lot of the random encounters) are way too arduously plodding in pace, and generally drawn out. I had 70 hours clocked in either before or after Haym Castle, which is just before the final area: itself, a torturous place, that at minimum, is a gauntlet of 10 maps--and still not as bad as the 100 floor Temple of the Dead. That 70 hours also doesn't factor in the hours of resetting I did grinding the first floor of the bonus dungeon to farm for Glass Pumpkins and other equipment. I also spent a ton of time leveling units in Training, but there's just way too many maps, and too many of them are completely inconsequential (but required). Early maps tend to put an ally unit three turns away from any other ally unit's intervention, but about two turns away from being set upon by the enemy hoard. On the flip side, much later in the game, almost every map turns into a collection of candy-asses, that are really only a threat if one really made a mistake in deploying units. Speaking of "deploying units," one has to set up the load-out before seeing anything about the map, which could be chock full of zombies that can only be defeated by using Exorcism or Banish, or killing all of them before any reanimate. In other words, one could be completely screwed without certain abilities/classes. So the expectation is, what, go into the battle, see what's happening, then reload the save to pick a better load-out? If not that, then wipe and try again? The most annoying thing to me is the random battles, though. It's not possible to run from encounters, and random encounters take too long; So, I would constantly be moving one town at a time, saving every time I moved, and resetting the game whenever I got a random encounter, because it was ultimately much faster than wasting time on a bunch of useless encounters.

In terms of mechanics, it's pretty boring, as well. Classes are pretty uninteresting, with some really ham handed utility (I'm looking at you, healers). Most of them seem downright useless. Stats start to rack up by the hundreds later in the game, but new equipment is usually only affecting stat bonuses by single digits. By the end of the game, I had a gunner who could theoretically shoot at anything on the entire map, and Habolim, with a skill from the Temple of the Dead that let him turn his DEX into attack damage (got it up to ~350 damage on the final boss) which was mostly all I needed other than a couple mages. When it's not kind of boring, the game is usually a pain in the ass, in terms of its core gameplay. So, there's that. Also, the terrain ALWAYS fucked me when I would shoot a ranged weapon, but I never saw the same thing happen to the computer.

Ultimately I only really care about this game for the story. It can be fun, but I just don't really know what they were trying to do with the mechanics. Terra Phantastica is still my standard-bearer for SRPG mechanics. For that reason, I'm unlikely to really play this game again, but I can re-watch all the cutscenes in the Warren Report, so I don't really feel much need to, since Neutral is the only acceptable path.

I played enough of this game, and I've written more than enough about it. I'm ready to leave it behind me, back in 2016.

Hoo boy. I got in on the Exile II action. I've always wanted to give it a go. I beat the Genesis port of Exile years ago, and it was pretty cool. You know, Working Designs has re-jiggered some games before, but I don't know if they've ever outright broken one like this. Everything hits like a Mack Truck. Until you get past a certain level threshold, and then you will take piddling damage from most enemies... but a few still hit like a sack of bricks. You're gonna have to use lots of healing items, or abuse save states. Guess which one I did! (Actually, both, but not to the degree you'd think on the latter.)

The WD translation is pretty censored, too, with some obvious religious name stand-ins (Christians are "Klispins", "Fallah" instead of Allah, and so on. The restoratives are various drugs, slightly changed from their real world version (Coca, Hasheesh, a stand-in for cannabis, and more that I don't necessarily recognize). What's more, if you use two in a row, the effects can be "weird", reducing or increasing stats or health.

The game overall, even without the issues, is pretty janky. You almost have to be at the very edge of the screen to scroll, which gives little chance to react, often your attacks won't actually hit, and projectiles in particular have strange hit boxes that don't align with what's on screen.

On the positive side, there's some cool anime-style artwork. I reckon it's worth... 5/10, maybe. Potentially lower just because of WD's meddling. Actually, yeah, I'll go 4/10. I should have gone with the Japanese version as Exhuminator suggested, but I wanted to see how busted it was. (Ironically, the last boss is completely pathetic.)

EDIT: For better or worse, it looks like I'm done for the year. I'll never approach this number again. And really, that should be a resolution next year. I know it's shorter stuff, but I really should take everything I know and make my own game. I just know it'll be a lot of work!

I'm not in a very good review mode right now, but Nier is really good. It's combat system is a bit basic (hit things with your sword and sometimes magic too), it's a bit ugly looking, and the plot doesn't really reveal too much until late in the game, but it does do a few things right that made me really enjoy playing it. The main characters are pretty deep but can often be funny to listen to as well. How the game shifts into different genres sometimes (like a bullet hell or text adventure) spices things up every so often. Plus, after a while the game starts revealing interesting things about the world that can also be pretty bonkers at times, which I really enjoyed for some reason.

Those things really make Nier stand out for me, and it's definitely up there somewhere as one of my favourite games that I've played this year. I still haven't even gotten the other three endings (which you get in New Game+ and are supposedly very good), so I'll definitely be continuing this game into the new year (and playing the sequal once that comes out ).